SanDisk Sansa e130 512 MB Digital Audio Player with SD Expansion Slot

Other products by SanDisk

Product Details

Product Manual [267kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2.5 x 7.8 inches ; 3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00083XXQM
• Item model number: SDMX2-512-A18
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (168 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 21, 2005

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer Sansa e100 Series MP3 players provide high-quality digital music playback with sophisticated navigation and expandable memory at an affordable price. You can add up to 2 GB of additional storage space with the SD slot for more MP3, WMA (including secure WMA content), and Audible audio file formats.

Features

• Plays MP3, WMA (including secure WMA content), Audible audio file formats
• Supports Microsoft PlaysForSure
• Digital FM tuner with 20 preset stations
• New custom navigation allows sorting songs by artist, album, song title, genre, year, date loaded, and more
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port for fast and easy transfer of files
• Can be used as an external storage device for data store and transfer.
• Includes sleek carrying case with armband
• Enhanced sound fidelity with SRS WOW
• Mass storage compliant, no drivers required
• Up to 17 hours continuous playback using one AAA battery(included)
• Indigo backlit multi-line LCD display with ID3 tag info.
• One-year warranty

Choose your music. Choose your device. Know it's going to work. Look for the PlaysForSure logo if you're shopping for a portable music or video device and you want to make sure the digital music and video you purchase will play back on it every time. Match the PlaysForSure logo on a large selection of leading devices and online music stores. If you see the logo, you'll know your digital music will play for sure. The PlaysForSure logo makes it easy to find digital media stores and devices that work together. Choose from a large number of digital music and video stores, including CinemaNow, MSN Music, MusicMatch, MusicNow, Napster, Wal-Mart Music Downloads, and many more. Look for the PlaysForSure logo on a wide variety of devices including portable music devices, portable video devices, digital audio receivers, Pocket PC's and Smartphones. The checkmarks indicate if the device is capable of playing back audio and/or video that's been downloaded from an online store. Additionally some devices will be able to play back media that has been purchase through an online store that offers subscription or rentals.

Product Description

SanDisk Sansa e100 series of small, highly portable digital music players use embedded flash memory to store many hours of digital music. For an enjoyable music-listening experience, the new music players feature high-fidelity sound, a sophisticated yet easy-to-use song navigation and sorting system and a unique design that continues SanDisk's tradition of distinctive styling.The SanDisk Sansa players can store hundreds of songs and play up to 15 continuous hours on a single AAA battery. The new players feature an SD card slot to conveniently add more storage capacity, which can be significant since SanDisk and other companies have recently announced SD cards up to 2GB in capacity.The new players are designed to work seamlessly with a wide range of popular music formats such as MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) in both unprotected and protected files (such as those WMA files purchased from music service provider sites).The SanDisk Sansa music players include stereo headphones, carrying case with armband, USB 2.0 cable, AAA Battery and Install CD with value-added software. For added flexibility, they can be used as a USB storage device. Furthermore, the new industrial design was created with future accessory options in mind.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

448 of 461 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good piece of music equipment, April 21, 2005

By	bigbearsfan "bigbearsfan" (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This mp3 player is pretty darn good. It is light weight, easy to handle, and fairly inexpensive ($103 from Amazon). I bought the Sandisk over the Rio and RCA offerings because Sandisk, at least in my research, didn't seem to have the number of complaints about product quality and lack of customer support that the other two brands had. Also, it seems as if getting at least a 512MB flash memory player with an expansion slot is going to cost around $100.

This player represents the second Sandisk mp3 player in our household. We were impressed with the ease of use and tranfer speed of the 512MB flash memory player (with no expansion slot). The Sansa player is no different. It is literally drag and drop on to the Sansa. The number of features also put it over the top versus the RCA and Rio.

Overall, you can't beat the usefullness of this little gadget.

Pro's:

--Small size, light weight
--USB 2.0 file transfer speed (transfer 100mb worth of songs in seconds)
--Backlight display
--Plays mp3 and WMA (you can put both on the player at the same time and it doesn't even blink)
--Radio reception is fairly decent here in the hills, but still won't pick up all of the available stations in your area (none of the small mp3 players on the market get anything more than decent reception so don't use this as a selling point regardless of what you buy)
--Sound quality is decent even when playing songs at 64Kbps. If you use this compression level, get good earphones.
--Lots of features including a customizable 5-band eqaulizer with presets, WOW surround sound simulator, and other sound effects. Also, has stopwatch timer and a host of other settings you can play with.
--Battery life is excellent. Not as good as some, but still near the top of players that have good battery life.
--It comes with pouch, armband, earbuds, usb cable.

Minor Con's:
--When you purchase this player, buy headphones. The included earbuds are pointless as the sound quality is barely adequate and the included 3 sets of earbud covers can't keep the earbuds in my ears.
--The battery cover door comes off fairly easily. It looks like it's on there pretty tight but it's not. I think Sandisk did this because of the many complaints that the battery covers on their mp3 players were too difficult to remove causing many people to break the battery cover (like my fiancee did with her own player).
--Your music files need to be properly tagged. I thought my files were appropriately named but this player doesn't seem to recognize the songs. I think the ID3 tags on my music are not correct as the player will display the music title you typed in but it will also show the album, song title, and artist as unknown.
--The buttons on the front are hard to push if you are not expecting it. You just have to adapt to pushing the button deeper than you would think.
--The volume is controlled by a rotary wheel on the top right side of the player. It is very difficult to turn, especially when it is in the holder. I would have preferred two more buttons on the front or side than the wheel.
--Getting the player out of the holder is incredibly difficult. Wipe of the display of the player and the inside of the plastic holder before putting the player in the holder. The plastic film that protects the display during transport leaves either static or a light adhesive film on the display that makes it stick to the plastic holder after you put it in. It took me five minutes and many attempts to get it out before I realized what happened. Also be careful not to yank off the battery door when pulling the player out of the holder.


There you have it. None of these gripes add up to more than a minor irritation which is why I gave it five stars (I would have given it 4.5 starts if I could have). However, having experienced other mp3 players, this one has the best combination of manufacturer product reliability and product support, versatility and expandability (up to 2GB SD card), features, and sound quality. My finacee has started using my player instead of her own player.


Added on 4/25/05:
In my initial review, I forgot to mention two things. The Sansa ignores your file organization so don't bother trying to setup seperate folders for different genres of music. This is why I warned before to make sure that the music you have is named and tagged properly because it does allow you to play songs by artist, album, date added to player, and so on (let's hope SanDisk fixes this with some software upgrades). Also, there is about a 1-2 second lag when switching between songs. This can get a little annoying at times but you will get used to it. To be fair, one more upside is that I added a 1G SD card (SanDisk Ultra II) and after the initial 60 seconds to read the card and update the playlist, it doesn't miss a beat. I still really enjoy this mp3 player.

Added on 05/02/05:
My Sansa has started to drink batteries like I drink Coke. Not sure why; it could be using extra juice to read music on the SD card. I may have to purchase rechargeable batteries if this keeps up. I got 6 hours of playing time out of my last battery. My fiancee's Sandisk (a flash memory player, no expansion slot) goes about 15 hours on a AAA battery. Not sure why the huge discrepancy between our two Sandisk players but my best guess is that my batteries are being drained reading the memory card. It would be helpful if someone out there with some knowledge about this would write a review.

Added on 0725/05:
After having a chance to live with the player for a few more months, I have to downgrade the rating to 3 stars. The player has become harder to live with. It plays reliably and the sound is good but it is still drinking batteries like crazy and the rotary volume knob hasn't loosened up much. Sandisk hasn't offered any software upgrades to address the lack of being able to organize your files any way you want to and it is still very difficult to remove the player from its holder. Having owned several makes and models of players before, this is still better than those players because each of those players died 2-8 months after purchase. Shop around and get what sounds good to you.

145 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly under-rated product, October 20, 2005

By	Steverino (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

I read all of the reviews on this page before buying the Sansa; some were fairly critical so I had second thoughts. In the end I decided to try it because it had all the features I wanted for a reasonable price. I'm so glad I did.

I use it with a 1gb SD card. With the card, the player holds about 55 CDs, and I keep some music on other smaller spare SD cards to occasionally swap out music I don't listen to as often without removing any of the albums I like to keep on hand. Without any expansion, the player will hold about 15 CDs.

A note -- when copying songs onto the SD card, make sure you create sub-folders and put the songs into them. If you put all of your music directly onto the card and not in any subdirectory, the player will not recognize them all; you'll get messages that the card is full when it isn't, and songs you know are on there will not be found. At first that's what happened to me. Then I moved my songs into folders (I named them "jazz," "rock," etc) and the problem completely went away, and the folders had no effect whatsoever on the music directory that shows up on the display. It took me awhile to figure all this out, but once I did, I was able to get to full capacity.

That was the last and only problem I ever had with this purchase.

The radio works suitably and gets adequate reception (admittedly I wish it had AM, but it doesn't). The screen display is effective and attractive for both radio and for audio files. The sound is good, and inserted properly, the headphones block out noise extremely well, stay in your ears, and provide quality sound -- with these headphones I can use this player mowing the lawn, on the treadmill, and doing other things that usually are too loud to use portable audio.

It's true that out of the box you cannot play songs in the order they're on the album, or create customized playlists. I find this to be a non-issue, or at worst a minor problem, but realize for some people it would be significant. There is now a free firmware upgrade that fixes this. By downloading the updated firmare (do a google search for "sansa sandisk firmware upgrade," it will be the first hit), you can create playlists, and songs will play in original album order instead of alphabetical. Problem solved!! But upgrade the firmware FIRST when you buy the player, not after loading music onto it, because the upgrade erases everything on the player and you'll need to reload.

It can go through battery power pretty quickly; but I love the fact that it uses conventional AAA batteries. Frankly it is much better to run out of power in 8 hours (if all the eq features are on, the display is bright, etc) but be able to pop in a battery, than it is to run out of power in 15 hours like an iPod but have to stop your workout (or be out of luck while out on a jog) to plug it into a USB port (or pay extra for an external AC adapter). When the guy sitting next to me on the plane has his iPod die, he's out of luck, perhaps for the rest of his trip. When my Sansa dies, I just put in a fresh AAA battery.

I paid about $80 on amazon (plus about $50 shopping carefully for a 1gb SD card). I couldn't be happier with the purchase and recommend this player highly.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Works if you work with it., October 3, 2005

By	John OBrien (Modesto, Ca) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

1. It DOES retain your EQ (and other) settings in custom after power off.
2. Sounds better without SRS Wow (menu>settings>sound effect>SRS WOW>off) this eliminates bass clipping (distortion).
3. Jazz or Rock EQ sounded good to me.
4. I rip CD's with audiograbber (free) at maximum sample rate (320 I think). Click the penguins to get all info for mp3 (if you use audiograbber you'll see what I mean). I'm sure there are other ripping software products that do the same.
5. If you have windows 2000 or later with the updates, forget the CD. Put it in the microwave for 3 seconds (it's cool to watch what happens). Windows will detect this device, no problem. Just plug it in, and use Windows explorer to transfer files. If you are not used to browsing for music files on a computer using windows explorer, then maybe you need the software to manage your files (bummer).
6. The headphones sound almost identical to the Sony MDR-EX51LP Fontopia phones (like $25). (too hot on the mids for me though) However, I think the headphones included with this device have a little better bass. Mind you, they are not better than the Sony MDR-EX71SL Fontopia (which are $45). Nevertheless, I plugged in the Sony MDR-EX71SL phones and it sounded great!
7. Take an exacto knife and skillfully cut a place in the plastic cover in which to insert an SD card (kind of red neck I suppose). Never remove the device from the carrying case again.
8. You can sort by artist, genre, album, year etc. that's how I recovered from the "no folders" problem.

Why the score? I hate absolutes. I am very satisfied with my purchase. Office Depot for $70.

10/12/05 update.

Got 256MB card in and the powerup time is minimal 5 seconds or so. The battery life is maintaining.

Make sure to run the firmware upgrade by doing a google search for sansa-firmware, it should be the first result.

This will fix the order problem and a few others. It adds a Favorites list, as well. To use Favorites simply press and hold the center button for a couple of seconds. It will ask if you want to add the currnet song to Favorites, press the center button for OK, and that's it! You can clear your Favorites at any time.

The upgrade will ask you to clear all music from the Sansa, so be prepared. Firmware upgrades are serious business. Make sure you have a fresh battery and a reliable connection to the computer.

5/25/06
Bought two more for my children. All work flawlessly under heavy use. No need to upgrade the newer ones' firmware. I have three now. Getting ready to buy another one.